The third Harry Potter movie continues the fine tradition of being largely faithful to the source material. Alfonso Cuaron works The Prisoner of Azkaban with a decidedly darker, more gothic sensibility, and he handles shots and drama with far more skill than Chris Columbus ever did.

I had to abandon my UK Bloomsbury paperback editions of the first four Potter books, together with many others, when I moved from Chicago. It was painful at the time of course, but I don't miss those books at all now. Not even the Potter ones. Hmm... is The Order of the Phoenix any good?

If only life were as easy as resetting a blog template.

I switch to Firefox, and my blog layout goes to heck. Fiddlesticks.

It's gonna take me a while to finish Lu Xun's iconic Na Han (Call to Arms). I picked up a copy in the original Mandarin at Kinokuniya on that last day of discounts, attracted especially by the photographs and illlustrations scattered throughout the pages. These provide explanations of places and activities referred to in the stories, while footnotes are reserved for the more esoteric and literary allusions.

I've always wanted to read Lu Xun in Mandarin, even though it feels like running with a ball and chain sometimes. It's even worse when I'm trying to read Japanese. I'm far more comfortable in English, like the vast majority of my peers, but I'm also a bit of a stickler for reading and watching media in their original languages. I have come to a comfortable understanding with translations, but dubbing remains grostesque to me. In my opinion, the struggle to understand someone isn't so much an issue of language as it is of time. Or is it just semantics?

What Anime Mech Are You?

Good. I love Evangelion. ^_^

Bad weekend, bad weekend for me. Solid soap opera material.

You never know what will turn up at church sales. Once I found an old Charlie Parker CD -- Swedish Schnapps + Great Quintet Sessions 1949 - 1951. Today I picked up a Hamasaki Ayumi remix album. 2CDs for $2. There's some merit to this electronica, but I was never a fan of Hamasaki's music to begin with. To me Ayu-mi-x III: Non-Stop Mega Mix Version's main utility is to shut the world out. My kind of elevator musak.

Spiderman 2 was entertaining and competent. Really liked the dizzying, swooping, darting camerawork. No real complaints, although the train rescue was stretching things a little bit -- even for our friendly neighbourhood superhero. Look out too for the camp horror influences; probably Sam Raimi having fun with his earlier films like the Evil Dead trilogy and Army of Darkness. Chainsaws, lots of screaming. :)

Sony Pictures is really pouring money into the franchise. There will be a third movie, of course, and I hope it doesn't drown under a deluge of easy money and fancy CGI. We'll have to wait till 2007 to find out.

Changed the comments feature. Back to Haloscan, so no more discrimination against non-Blogspot folk and those to lazy to log in. C'mon people, let's hear from ya!

This is just... too damn cool for words...

/speechless




A small internet phenomenon on Futaba Channel, the OS-tan (OS for Operating System, and -tan as an overly cute Japanese honorific for a person) or simply OS Girls are the personification of several OSes, most famously Windows, by various amateur Japanese artists. A pure fan creation, the appearance of each character is generally consistent among artists. OSes are always portrayed as women, the Windows girls usually as sisters, despite sometimes seeming the same age (or younger).

/collapses and dies

The massive blackout we had on Wed night is quickly fading from the minds of most. The whole experience was creepy more than scary, and I think some people are finding fault for the wrong reasons. For instance, some have complained that they weren't able to reach the police to ask for information, like "Was it JI?" and "When's the power coming back?"

These critics should reflect for a bit and then whack themselves smartly on the head for panicking. The police hotline is for emergencies, not information. If they want information, well, that's what radios are for. Besides, so what if the blackout was because of a terrorist attack? Would that have stopped these critics from wringing their hands? Maybe, if it made them panic some more.

The main concern here should be why this widespread blackout happened in the first place. Five blackouts in the last two years is unacceptable to begin with, and this recent one is by far the most severe of the lot. When all it takes is one malfunctioning valve on Jurong Island (effectively the same as cutting off the flow of natural gas from Indonesia) to result in 70%-80% of Singapore reading the papers by candlelight, it doesn't take a Clausewitz to realise that there's a blatant vulnerability there on the magnitude (or ineptitude) of the Death Star's thermal exhaust port. Government is making the right noises, but we'll see.

... and the freaky-cute limited edition Murakami Takashi piece that came with Figure Oh Issue 71. Sorry 'bout the shakiness, but it was either this one or another with a lot of glare from the plastic packaging. Yeah, can't bear to open it... yet. 

My haul from Kinokuniya last night and tonight.  

I've taken a liking to Ladytron. And Boney M's Ra Ra Rasputin was stuck in my head all of yesterday.

I'm trying to find some common thread between these, and maybe Daft Punk. I've always had trouble telling people what kind of music I like, mainly because I don't think I'm able to properly convey what I mean. How do you represent an aural experience in words? So I usually end up resorting to names of performers rather than naming a genre. I especially have this problem when it comes to electronica. I like some house, but not all house. I like some lounge, but not all lounge. I like some stuff with 80's-style electronica, but I don't go for all 80's-style electronic music. And so on.

That's not really what people expect in response to the question: "What kind of music do you like/listen to?", is it?

Teck Loon brought this to my attention: The Shell Economist Prize. I admit that the first thing that leapt to my mind was the prize money. US$20,000 for the top Gold prize. Two Silver runners-up get US$5,000 each, and five Bronze award winners will take home US$3,000 apiece. Not bad for an essay that's less than 2000 words.

Winning essays from previous years are also on the website. Worth a look.

Given that I've watched Interstella 5555 more than once, it seems fair to conclude that I like that movie:

Like Pink Floyd's The Wall, the music for Discovery and the storyline for Interstella 5555 were conceived simultaneously. The videos for "One More Time" and "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger", which had both seen a fair bit of MTV rotation around the time of the album's release, were not simply clever vignettes for the songs, nor was Discovery purely a film score -- in fact, Interstella 5555 makes clear the degree to which each influenced the shape of the other. Ultimately, Daft Punk intended Discovery to be heard in the context of Interstella 5555, and it's no wonder: Matsumoto's animation enlivens some of the less formidable tracks, and the details of scenes in Interstella 5555 often are inspired by the music itself.

Beautiful 70's style animation seamlessly integrated with great electronic tunes, with fine direction. What's not to like about good storytelling?

I had a fantastic weekend, filled with animation, music and laughter. Thank you all! :)

There was an article about the growing popularity of manga drawing courses in today's paper. As usual, our papers do an excellent job of spotting a treand long after it's entrenched itself here.

What was interesting was the unanimous opinion of instructors from all three schools -- that the work produced by students and manga enthusiasts here "lacks maturity".

How true. Technical skill was never an issue, not here. It's imagination; the ability to break out of rehashed plots, slapstick and cliched devices that we lack.

In my personal opinion, this is because the artists tend to be in their teens or young adulthood, and they don't read much outside of Japanese manga. In fact, often not outside particular genres of manga. Without exposure to other forms of story-telling and other drawing styles, no wonder their work lacks depth.

Just watched The Seventh Seal. Gripping stuff, and I'm amazed by the economy of the whole film. Black and white of course, and a modest budget with 35 days of shooting only. The film manages to convey its weighty, existential and theological dilemmas so well with so relatively little. Pure allegory -- and not afraid to flaunt it.

Picking up Stephen King's On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft was one of the best things I did all month. This little gem was lying amidst a messy pile of books in one of the bins at a book fair.

I have come to believe that there is usually little point in rummaging though stacks and mounds of anything at reduced prices, searching for that one object to buy. It's simply not worth the effort. I'm a firm believer in serendipitous finds. If I'm supposed to read it, it will find me. Stephen King's candid little autobiography/writing guide, only proves my point.

If you have been wondering why I have not been writing lately, it's not that I've been doing anything that productive. On the contrary, I was preparing for what turned out to be a tortuous Legend of the Five Rings tournament (termed a Kotei) this past weekend.

I did guess how the weekend was going to turn out. That I actually went ahead with it is probably a testament to my idiotic optimism. Even so, I did not anticipate the degree to which vastly different outcomes depended on the smallest decisions. Almost like butterflies causing hurricanes. I say almost, because it was all luck.

Hence, even though many will call it a learning experience (and I did learn a couple of things too), I still think I would've spent my time more fruitfully by burning the money I've spent on the game and flogging myself repeatedly with one of those flails in Mel Gibson's presumptuous Passion of the Christ.

Without saying, in the grand scheme of things all this is nothing compared to the sheer madness out there. But my regrets twisted like knives in flesh, and the pain is not all gone yet.

To me, Jack Neo's films are the equivalent of morality tales for heartlanders. Unpretentious, straightforward characters coupled with an equally straightforward narrative heavily flavoured with moral messages.

This not to say that the films are inherently bad. On the contrary, Neo makes excellent entertainment with the mix of verbal and visual comedy, original songs that act as commentary, and a script packed with lively dialogue and amiable and sympathetic characters. Home run is the clear exception to this -- Neo's originality zings and zooms when it isn't crimped while reinterpreting someone else's work.

What sets Neo's latest -- The Best Bet (Tu Ran Fa Cai) -- apart from his earlier modern-day parables is a more focused narrative, the predominantly-Hokkien dialogues and experimentation with darker, more violent undertones. Unfortunately, focus groups apparently disliked Neo's attempts at growth as a filmmaker, and he was forced to adjust the movie accordingly, including tacking on an anti-climactic ending out of a Primary Three student's written composition. A criticism of artistic cowardice may be in order here.

But who cares? The Best Bet looks to be another money-spinner for Raintree Pictures (and thus Mediacorp). Jack Neo, in all likelihood, will not see the lion's share of the profits and royalties. The in-your-face product placements do bear slight hints of irreverence but at the end of the day Jack Neo knows that film-making, for his backers, is a business. Some of us may want to sneer at his pandering to the masses, but artistic freedom doesn't pay the bills.

How to make a strangeknight

Ingredients: 1 part intelligence 1 part ambition 1 part empathy

Method: Combine in a tall glass half filled with crushed ice. Top it off with a sprinkle of sadness and enjoy!

Username:

Personality cocktail
From Go-Quiz.com

Am reading Patrick O'Brian's Master and Commander, the first novel to feature "Lucky" Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin. The book is bursting with nautical and historical detail, dialogue slathered with slang and accents, understated humour and vivid glimpses into the risk-filled, uncertain life of a ship's crew.

Fun stuff, fun stuff. I've always had a soft spot for old sailing ships. Nautical terms fascinate me, knots and navigation continue to flummox me. I wished I'd ended up in the Navy for my National Service, even though a former close friend of mine who did receive a posting there complained vehemently about life on a ship. If I recall correctly, his diatribe revolved around seasickness and violent puking. Especially during storms.

Superficially, this site looks like a set of FAQs about a novel that I wrote entitled QUICKSILVER. As time goes on, we hope that it will develop into something a little more than that. We don't know how it will come out. It's an experiment.

Why put the information on such a complicated system, when a simple FAQ is easier? Because we are hoping that the annotations of the book on this site will seed a body of knowledge called the Metaweb, which will eventually be something more generally useful than a list of FAQs about one and only one novel.

Didn't know Shostakovich composed the music for The Battleship Potemkin. I thought that was his 5th Symphony I heard, but when it turns out the 1976 recreated score was a combination of the 10th and the 11th.

I borrowed The Emperor and the Wolf for a kind of trial reading, to help me decide whether I should actually buy it. I doubt I'll be able to go through all 630+ pages (the last 200+ pages comprise an extremely extensive filmography of Kurosawa's and Mifune's works. Mmm... Reference value!) within the three weeks the library has allotted to me. Particularly since I don't have space in my bag for the bulky mass of the US hardcover version, so I won't be lugging it to work too often.

I have tried to explain to people Neal Stephenson's novels Cryptonomicon, Quicksilver and most recently The Confusion, and I find that I fail horribly. Although the flashback-present day method of narration is hardly surprising, I find my explanations sidetracked and warped by attempts to convey the wit, the imaginatively-constructed setpieces that stretch ideas of historical fact, the candid portrayals of characters. Most of all, Stephenson's uncanny ability to take the most esoteric and complicated topics and infuse them with a startling energy and clarity. Suddenly topics like cryptography, trade and chemistry are essential elements in a rip-roaring adventure spanning the entire globe. I can't convey the depth of these ideas purely through words, let alone in an off-the-cuff conversation on an MRT train or over a meal.

We went to see two Iranian films at the Goethe Institut here last night. Fortuitously, copies of this collection of photos by Beat Presser of Herzog at work were still on sale. These volumes were brought in for the Werner Herzog Retrospective, part of the Fringe at this year's Singapore Film Festival. Grabbed a copy at $15, with scenes from Aguirre, The Wrath of God still raw and bleeding in my mind.

Close Up by Abbas Kiarostami was a curious mix of truth and fiction, constantly challenging the divide between some objective reality and the fundamental deception behind acting. But as so many others have already realised and imbibed (and subsequently the fact no longer astonishes them), the camera makes no such distinction.

I enjoyed Mohsen Makhmalbaf's The Cyclist more. Everyone naturally gravitates towards pain and suffering.

The Mathematics of the Chinese Calendar.

Ah. Found the font I wanted.

The devil opened up his case
and he said, "I'll start this show."
And fire flew from his fingertips
as he rosined up his bow.

And he pulled the bow across the strings
and it made an evil hiss.
Then a band of demons joined in
and it sounded somethin' like this.

(violin plays)

When the devil finished, Johnny said,
"Well, you're pretty good, old son,
but sit down in that chair right there
and let me show you how it's done."

Fire on the Mountain. Run, Boys, Run!
The Devil's in the House of the Rising Sun.
Chicken in the Bread Pan Pickin' Out Dough.
Granny, Does Your Dog Bite? No, Child, No!

-- The Charlie Daniels Band, The Devil Went Down to Georgia

Well, u-- um, can we come up and have a look?

What Monty Python Character are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Have you read Murakami Haruki's Tony Takitani?

Have you seen the movie website? (requires Japanese browser support).

The one day I don't bring a book or my discman to work, just has to be the day when I have nothing to do, and gobs of minutes to spend reading. Maybe listen to music too.

Ah well. There's always writing.

Hmm. Should I stick with this template? Or go back to my old one?

Decisions, decisions.

Enjoyed Shrek 2 a lot. By now you probably would have heard all about the spoofs, the fine animation, the witty dialogue and the admirable voice acting. So I won't go any further into those. Special mention goes to Antonio Banderas -- his Puss in Boots stole the show imho -- and also to Pui Kwan who burst out singing Holding Out For A Hero together with the Fairy Godmother.

Another good song from the '80s! I used to disown that decade of gaudy hair and bad fashion sense, but I cannot deny the fact that some of the most memorable songs stuck in my head are from that period. Part of the reason has to be that I grew up listening to those songs, but I like to also think that the music back then was better-composed, the singers less mass-produced.

It's incredibly annoying to spend a long time picking a suitable font, and then not have it show up on your screen 'cos your browser doesn't support it.

Thought I'd change my blog template. Bear with us for a while folks, but it's business as usual in the meantime.

This is what the OST for "The Story of Qiu Ju" looks like. The pic's a bit bleached, so make the colours a little bit darker using your imagination.  

To watch this week: Aguirre, The Wrath of God and Battleship Potemkin.

I always stop by HMV whenever I'm in Citylink and have time to kill. This is for three reasons:

1) To sample music

2) To peek at their unofficial bargains table. Wandered in there last night with Amanda and picked up a 1999 Wu Bai and China Blue album -- Bai Ge (Dove) -- and the OST for Zhang Yimou's The Story of Qiu Ju (Qiu Ju Da Guan Si). The former to satisfy my curiosity, the latter purely because of the cool packaging.

3) To gaze lovingly at the Akira Kurosawa: Four Samurai Classics DVD box set. The massive irony that I could have bought that box set instead of blowing my money on L5R cards, is hardly lost on me. In fact it comes to mind every time I heft the package off its place on the shelf. I want to draw comfort from its weight -- The Seven Samurai, The Hidden Fortress, Yojimbo, Sanjuro . Instead, the burden in my trembling hands reprimands and shames.

btw, Thai Express is a very good place to eat at. Contrary to the smarmy-Chinese-takeaway connotations of the word "Express" in a restaurant name, the food's fine value for money and the decor chic and bright. Am definitely going back.

I missed Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World here the first time round, and regret has been gnawing a little pit in my heart ever since. But no more! Not after rushing to catch the inaugural MDA-Kodak Master Lecture yesterday, at the insanely early time of 6pm. Fortunately I made it with time to spare (and I didn't even need to take a cab).

Master and Commander is awesome on the big screen. Supremely awesome. Intensely detailed. Beautifully shot.

I hung around for the dialogue with cinematographer Russell Boyd, responsible for Master and Commander's Best Achievement in Cinematography Oscar this year. The good man gamely took on all questions with sincerity and honesty. He came across as a bit shy, without any airs whatsoever.

The key points I took away from the dialogue/Q&A were his thoughts on what a cinematographer does (doesn't just work to fulfil the director's vision at the least, and provides his own interpretation and input to complement and enhance that vision at best) and a patient "can-do" attitude towards working with diverse people in a film. Particularly fickle actors. "Roll with the punches," he said.

I'm satisfied with the cheap $12 replica of the One Ring that I got at the Lord of the Rings Exhibition yesterday. Tomorrow's the last day, so I should have expected a crowd. Particularly on a public holiday. Perhaps I should've gone this evening (Open till Midnight!). Then maybe I wouldn't have to bump against parents with irascible kids in tow, find ways around bored girlfriends listening patiently to their boyfriends rationalise Middle-Earth and generally tolerate the bustling throng of humanity crowded into a small space.

It was great seeing all the cool weapons. I continue to be immensely impressed by the sheer amount of detail on the costumes, armor and weapons. Detail is all. The little things count.

Proceeded to Toa Payoh to visit a gaming store tucked away in a little corner of Toa Payoh Central, nestled within an agglutination of HDB flats. I wasn't expecting much, but it really was a hole-in-the-wall kind of shop. No air-conditioning, with enough room inside for one table only.

Considering that L5R is a fairly niche market compared to the slavering hordes that play Magic, WWF Raw and whatever card game is being marketed on Saturday morning cartoons, to hear that a new shop in firm HDB heartlander territory was selling and *gasp* successfully introducing the game to others was more than enough to pique my curiosity (which, admittedly, is an easy enough thing to do).

Went to join Justin for the SFS screening of Young Adam in the evening. I liked the movie better after sleeping on it. Other than the languid pace and some slight suspension of disbelief, I can't really think of anything to criticise. Script, most of the acting, editing and camerawork all very good. It's just that I don't particularly enjoy films about an aimless, amoral character who cannot or will not commit to anything in his life.

Here, the Sight and Sound review does a better job.

A great Hopper, in the paint, is all stillness, silence, solidity. Not the stillness of Vermeer, of stopped yet reverberating time, but a stillness all of his own: the hiatus, the lapse, the longueur, the moment between significant moments. A man staring out of the window while a girl sleeps beside him. A woman seated in the dead light of a theatre during intermission, blank as the safety curtain.

You don't hear the waves of Cape Cod in Hopper's seascapes or the cicadas in his landscapes. There are no crowds or sirens in his cities. All is silence; the mind turned in on itself, thinking, or not quite thinking, the only action. How implausible it would be to enter a Hopper and hear actual sound.

I have been expecting a day like this. When mind and body feel just that little bit out of sync.

There is no pain, you are receding.
A distant ship�s smoke on the horizon.
You are only coming through in waves.
Your lips move but I can�t hear what you�re sayin�.
When I was a child I had a fever.
My hands felt just like two balloons.
Now I got that feeling once again.
I can�t explain, you would not understand.
This is not how I am.
I have become comfortably numb.

----- Pink Floyd, Comfortably Numb

Monday already? For a Few Dollars More and The Ipcress File remain unwatched.

I borrowed those two DVDs thinking: "Ok, it's just two. I can handle two. I can watch two at my leisure and not rush them on Monday and Tuesday night."

Should've known better :p

I was on medical leave on Friday for my sore throat and blocked nose (flu?). Spent the afternoon at Kino with Justin, and ended up buying The Edward Said Reader after vacillating over the pricey The Emperor and the Wolf. About S$50 after the 20% discount, but can't I get it for cheaper online? Besides, the library has it. (One copy in Singapore, and on the other side of the island no less.)

In fact, can't I get all of my books for cheaper by shopping online? Sure, spending an afternoon wandering aimlessly and browsing at will has its charms. But for the perenially cash-strapped and frugal, the internet is alluring. Shipping costs can be offset somewhat by ordering in bulk and using vPost. Kinokuniya's 20% discount coupons are not quite beeswax against these virtual siren songs.

First, I need to finish The Confusion. Stephenson has the uncanny knack for weaving the technical and the esoteric into gripping adventures populated by vivid characters and wit. Finance and international trade never sounded so exciting as they do here.

Saturday? Work. Then L5R trading at PI. Then mahjong session with friends. Mahjong's a great game and I enjoy playing it so long as there's no real money involved.

Sunday? Church, nap, then my bro and his family came over.

There we go. A brief accounting of my weekend. Now if my sore throat would just go away...

That boy needs therapy, psychosomatic
That boy needs therapy, purely psychosomatic
That boy needs therapy
Lying down on the couch, what does that mean?
You're a nut! You're crazy in the coconut!
What does that mean? That boy needs therapy,
I'm gonna kill you, that boy needs therapy,
Ranagazoo, let's have a tune,
Now when I count three,
That... that... that.. boy.. boy needs therapy,
He was white as a sheet, and he also made false teeth

Avalanches above, business continues below,
Did I ever tell you the story about,
Cowboys! M... M.. M.. Midgets and indians and... Fron.. Frontier Psychiatrist,
I... I felt strangely hypnotised,
I was in another world, a world of 20,000 girls,
And milk! Rectangles, to an optometrist! The man with the golden eyeball,
And tighten your buttocks, pour juice on your chin,
I promised my girlfriend... a violin

-- The Avalanches, Frontier Psychiatrist

Out of the 4 I borrowed last week, I only managed to watch two. Fellini's 8 1/2 and Danny and Oxide Pang's Bangkok Dangerous. Much has already been written about the former. All I will add is that I enjoyed the fusion of fantasy and memory immensely.

(I will bite off a more manageable chunk next time. 2 DVDs?)

Bangkok Dangerous is a good debut, although I don't care much for the Pang Brothers' constant use of cuts to speed up the movie. Prepare yourself for a very shaky camera, and the most straightforward of plots with equally simple characters. Which isn't too bad with me so long as it's told well. The Pang brothers' no-frills treatment of violence is refreshing. Death straight up and undiluted; people die and hitmen run like mad. There is nothing cool about this underworld.

The problem is, it's been done before. For all the Pang brothers' stop-motion, quick filter changes and other camera tricks, their movie just isn't exceptional in any way, like a competent cafeteria cook.

The soundtrack was horrible though. Mostly limp techno, and the final piece did not sound appropriate at all.

The use of different film media within the movie itself is an interesting touch. For instance Kong's childhood looks like it was shot in grainy overexposed Super 8, like an old home video. But sometimes the effect obscures, as in Kong's final assassination which is nearly impossible to decipher due to the intense graininess.

In all not a bad flick, not as pretentious as some of the stuff we're seeing out of HK (e.g. Blood Brothers). And Premsinee Ratanasopha (Fon) is such cute eye candy ^_^

Bhutan's stunning mountainous landscape and straightforward characterisation are the main selling points of Travellers and Magicians. The landscape is simply spectacular. The cast, mostly first-timers, give refreshingly believable performances. Director Khyentse (pron. KINT-say) Norbu has a fine visual sense (for instance, the scene where Deki peeks out at Tashi from behind lush blue cloth) and his script is simple without being inane, if a bit slow-paced. Depending on how much patience you have, your interest may flag quickly.

If there's a moral to this fable (and it's tempting to extract one since Norbu is supposed to be the third reincarnation of a Lama), it's simply to not take what you have for granted. Then again if I were the government official in the film, well-respected by all, with job security and the distinct possibility of marrying a cute, gentle wife, I wouldn't be going to America either. But maybe that's just me.

I liked Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind for the clever script and the visuals. My heart has a soft sympathetic spot for goofy, maladjusted individuals trying to get by. Moreover, the literal disintegration of memories was a joy to watch, together with the visual representation of a mental landscape where geographical distance and physical presence have no meaning.

Justin appears to hate the movie (and Kaufman) for its narcissism. After all, Joel isn't really speaking to Clementine in his memories. He's actually interacting with his idea of Clementine.

(This of course begs the question of what relationships really consist of -- do we really fall in love with people? Or ideas of people?)

So Joel is essentially playing with his own mind, and this does follows Kaufman's tendency towards obsessive / narcissistic scripts where the audience endures his (or a character's) navel-gazing. The worst culprit is of course, Adaptation.

The fact that Joel is essentially messing within the confines of his head on a solo adventure reveals some major plotholes and a deus ex machina. The role of Patrick is there specifically to trigger Joel's resistance. And how did Joel know where to go at the end? If his memories of Clementine were all wiped out, you would have to conclude that there must have been something beyond memory that egged him on to go. I suppose you could attribute that to some concept of the Subconscious or Unconscious (and indeed Mary's and Clementine's behaviour indicate that love is more than memories, coincidence and conscious choice).

So is love hardwired in us somehow? Or predetermined? Eternal Sunshine seems to indicate through well-paced clever visuals, quirky characters and good dialogue that there is some innate element to attraction beyond the conscious. Depending on your outlook on life specifically your opinion of love, this is either depressing, uplifting or trivial.

In all, Eternal Sunshine is a clever film. Interesting and funny with bubbly performances from all. Justin calls it "psychotherapy for the masses". At S$8.50, it's a cheap but engaging thrill.

btw, Lacuna, Inc

Weekend movie report:

Travellers Eternal and Sunshine of the Magicians Spotless Mind

If you didn't know already, the "thousand ships" reference is not from the Iliad at all, but from Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus. Basically Faustus meets Helen, who ended up in Hell, and he says:

Was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships /
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?

Mmm. Iambic pentameter rolls so nicely off the tongue.

Watched Troy yesterday with my bro. I was reluctant to do so, but there wasn't an evening screening for Van Helsing at that cinema. Not that I thought the latter was any better than the former. Van Helsing is just shorter and less pretentious in a Marvel vs. Capcom kind of way. But it's always been Wolverine vs. the whole frigging world anyhow :p

The only things I enjoyed in the entire film (seeing as I'm a heterosexual male and hence do not lust after well-built, half-naked men in skirts) were:

1) The balls of fire scene. Very cool concept.

2) The Hector vs. Achilles duel. Excellent forms and choreography. The sequence appeared to have been inspired by 70's and 80's kungfu flicks. Elements like Eric Bana's exaggerated fatigue and Brad Pitt's pauses while in stance and trapping moves. And the end of the fight comes abruptly after a blurred flurry of strokes. If you still fail to get the idea, the background music for the duel comprises solely drumbeats a la Michelle Yeoh and Zhang Ziyi's night fight in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.

3) Some nicely composed shots e.g. Achilles against a soft morning sky, with the smouldering pyre dominating the screen.

Things I found curious:

1) Characterisations. Achilles as uber-soldier with the EQ of a 5 year-old. Agamemnon as slimy politician.

2) Why can't Eric Bana inflect?

3) Why did the scriptwriters create such a flimsy premise for the wooden horse? Odysseus, brilliant strategist and cunning fox that he's supposed to be, gets inspired by a soldier who's whittling a toy horse from his kid. (That was when we walked out, by the way. Out of all the characters in the Iliad, I'd always liked Odysseus the best.)

4) James Horner seems to have run out of ideas for his music. For Troy, he seems to have dipped liberally into Shostakovich's 5th Symphony at least (I've heard Stargate and Star Trek II as well, but will need to confirm that), and apparently hired the same singer who ululated in Gladiator.

I'm not gonna spend more time stringing together whole sentences for this underwhelming effort. Slow-paced, with bland dialogue peppered with throwaway lines that I will use with heavy irony in social situations for hilarity. At least the script is internally consistent (e.g. we see Lego -- umm... Paris training his archery skills early on. Guess how Achilles dies?). The constant references to the plight of the common soldier and his family do add a little more depth and variety to the dialogue. Then again this pretty but emasculated Iliad needs all the help it can get.

Where are the good movies? Is there no-one else? Is there no-one else?

Added Errant Story to the side menu. Poe's pretty talented, and he's clearly improved since Exploitation Now ^_^;;; Like having a real plot, for instance.

If you were to look at the disaster area my desk has become, you will notice 4 DVDs, all bearing labels indicating that they are the property of the National Library Board. These borrowed materials are the happy consequence of the upgrading of my membership to the exalted rank of Premium (S$21 including GST). It's a great way to raise funds, and one of the ways in which our public library system has been shaken up (mostly for the better) in the last 5-6 years.

Unfortunately I will not be able to watch 8 1/2, M, The Graduate and Bangkok Dangerous all within 7 days (with no renewal of loans). Not with all the other things I should be doing. Like paperwork for interviews later this year. Like watching Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and other good recent releases. Like playing with the well-used 2.0 megapixel digicam that Amanda wants to sell me for cheap. Like listening to music. Like sleeping more than 4 hours a night.

I am saturated with possibilities. That makes it more difficult to choose. I have nothing to complain about. :)

Caught Blood Brothers (Jiang Hu) last night with Justin at the SFS core screening. Now for my take on Infernal Affairs: The Alternate Universe.

It's an oft-hackneyed theme in slick packaging. No grittiness, no blood and gore (very odd to see parangs and knives remain shiny while people are slashing with them. Did the director run out of money for fake blood? Either that or teflon-coated steel.). Instead, if this were your first movie about HK triads, you'd think that every gangster had smooth baby-bum complexions when young and dress in a combination of expensive clothes and accessories without any modicum of fashion sense.

Whatever. The vets more or less perform as expected, but only Andy Lau and Jacky Cheung get things to do. Edison Chan and Shawn Yue still cannot act their way out of a meadow.

But that's assuming that you haven't been disoriented by all the camera changes, rapid cuts and visual tricks that director Wong Ching Po throws around. Blood Brothers is damn pretty. There's no doubt about it. If you want to study lighting, costuming and composition, you can't go very far wrong with this.

I hesitate to call it style though. That sounds like the director actually knew what he was doing other than throwing lots of disparate elements together.

Well, actually, maybe there was some kind of consistency. Mostly low shots, rapid cuts and slow-mo overkill.

What's with all the slow-mo? Any cinematic excuse for slow-mo, no matter how cliched, is in this film. Smoking a cigarette? Slow-mo. Cocking an automatic? Slow-mo. Stepping outside? Slow-mo. Fighting and getting slashed? Slow-mo. Big fight at the end? Slow-mo slow-mo slow-mo slow-mo slow-mo. I'm surprised he didn't shoot someone peeing in slow-mo.

Some call that style. It looks to me like a cover-up for lousy storytelling.

Plotwise the film is predictable in its set-pieces. No surprises there even though the director tries his darndest to confuse the audience at the beginning with rapid cuts back and forth across the conversations of 3 sub-bosses. So-so execution of the twist at the end. And if you didn't understand the temporal shift by the climactic (and incredibly cliched) fight scene, the director rams it down your throat through two lengthy sequences after that. Y'know, for all those viewers with IQs below 100.

The pacing was actually quite good up till the part where Yik goes back to look for Yoyo. After that the movie starts to drag considerably. The robbery sequence has a nice dreamlike touch, but it boggles the imagination that so many moneychangers would remain open so late into the night. A few Wong Kar Wai touches -- the 60's style ballad and the shot of Yoyo leaving the hotel room. Otherwise, Blood Brothers is a mishmash of techniques, more MTV special than thriller.

Heard an ad for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind on the radio this morning, and consequently ELO's Mr Blue Sky was stuck. in. my. head all the way till after lunch.

I'm genuinely looking forward to this movie. Adaptation was a blast, and I wish I'd caught Being John Malkovich on the big screen. The world could do with more writers like Charlie (and Donald, bless 'is soul) Kaufman.

I gave in and bought Neal Stephenson's The Confusion, Book 2 of The Baroque Cycle. This time I went for the US hardcover version over the UK trade paperback. The warm coppery dust jacket of the former appealed to me far more than the UK version, and Borders was selling both at the same price. Moreover, I think hardcovers stand a better chance of not deteriorating in the hands of my older brother :p

I realise that when placed back-to-back, Books 1 and 2 will not match since my copy of Quicksilver hails from England. I figure I will try to look for the US hardcover of Quicksilver sometime. The dust jacket for that is rather attractive too, done up in gunmetal. The only reason why I got the UK one is because the US ones were sold out at the time.

And when I find it, I will have an excuse to read it all over again.

It costs far too much to drink alcohol here.

HMV's having a sale. Picked up The Flaming Lips' Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots (Better late than never I guess! And under the benevolent influence of Vaya), a budget DVD of Kurosawa Akira's brilliant epic The Seven Samurai and a similarly no-frills VCD of the Coen Brothers' O Brother, Where Art Thou. The bill came to about S$30 altogether -- which was how much I spent drinking with some friends later in the evening, after a dinner to celebrate a birthday.

Alcohol costs far too much here. I'd rather have good movies and music.

Gnocchi Seauton! #63

Your score was 92. Very quirkyalone:
Relatives may give you quizzical looks, and so may friends, but you know in your heart of hearts that you are following your inner voice. Though you may not be romancing a single person, you are romancing the world. Celebrate your freedom on National Quirkyalone Day, February 14th!

How quirkyalone are you?

Got no time for some of your fave horror classics?

The Exorcist in 30 Seconds with Bunnies

The Shining in 30 Seconds with Bunnies

I passed a neighbourhood electrical appliance shop on my way home last night, and playing over the speakers was some crappy Eurobeat remix of the Ending Theme from Vandal Hearts.

This turn-based strategy game for the Playstation was quite good, and the Ending Theme (the Opening Theme is a variation on the Ending) is unique. It's sung in a Slavic language (Serbian? Croatian? Whatever it is they speak in Yugoslavia :p) with bits of French in it. A lilting, haunting melody that tugs at the senses despite the unintelligibility of the lyrics.

The lousy techno in the remix ruined the song completely.

Yikes! I don't blog for a weekend, and I come back to a redesigned Blogger that looks like a preschool textbook.

I still suck at L5R :p I will probably stop playing after Kotei on 19 June, and spend my time on money on more fulfilling pursuits -- like photography or film. Or a new digicam, or thumbdrive/MP3 player -- you get the idea.

And if anyone -- anyone! -- can tell me where to find a copy of The Avalanches Since I Left You here please let me know? :(

In daylights,
In sunsets,
In midnights,
In cups of coffee,
In inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife

525600 minutes to ORD!

I arrived back in Singapore on Monday. Since then, I've been busy and have been surviving on about 4 hours of sleep since Monday.

Don't feel like blogging at all.

Oh yes -- welcome home Justin. Now I want to travel some more :/

Last blog before I head up to KL for the weekend.

Finished Oryx and Crake. The road to Hell is paved with corporate intentions and personal tragedy.

My final films of this year's Film Fest:

City Bus: Fun.

High Noon in Jakarta: Interesting look at Abdurrahman Wahid's standoff with Wiranto early in the former's presidency. Hindsight adds layers of pathos onto the events depicted. As everyone knows, Gus Dur was effectively ousted (though he still remains a popular leader in the NU) and Wiranto stands an excellent chance of becoming the next President of Indonesia -- the exact inverse of the odds of him ever being hauled in front of a human rights abuses tribunal.

Zombie Dog: Directed by outspoken and eccentric S'porean film critic Toh Hai Leong, this is supposed to be a mockumentary about the making of a splatterhouse film by Toh. A better attempt than Djinn's Perth, but too many Eric Khoo influences and the film appears to be all about Toh's personal neuroses. The script is by and large darkly funny, but sometimes the self-referential irony gets too repetitive and cumbersome. Nice try, but no cigar.

See y'all later.

I'm pushing an elephant up the stairs
I'm tossing out punchlines that were never there
Over my shoulder a piano falls
Crashing to the ground

-- REM, The Great Beyond

Perth by Ong Lay Jinn a.k.a. Djinn, was average. Nice effort, but an unfocused and rambling movie, with not a few inconsistencies and stilted dialogue. The screening was made worse by the constant power trips in the building that interrupted the film several times.

Lim Kay Tong gave a decent performance, but the stage veteran had an atrocious accent. He sounded like a cardboard Italian don half the time while the other half was spent straining (and failing) to prevent his usual British-tinged diction from slipping out.

Sunny Pang's and Victory Selvam's performances were the best part of the movie, imho. Both flesh their roles out admirably with flair and panache, considering that they had secondary roles based on stereotypes: Pang as a gangster and Selvam as an old army buddy of Lim's character.

I really, really wanted this movie to be good. But it was so-so, at best. :(

Finished Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. Chabon is hardly economical with his words. The prose is extremely descriptive and florid, the profusion of long latinates and unusual metaphors threatening to crowd themselves off the page. The result is a vividly imagined, well-written blend of history, fiction and changing zeitgeist. It's a good book to travel with -- short chapters, undemanding of the reader.

Takeshi Miike's Gozu is weird. Just damn weird. Funny, surreal and the strangest film I've ever seen.

Took the day off to sleep. Got up and watched Otomo Katsuhiro's Roujin Z on DVD :P The aged issue is always relevant of course -- maybe that helps explain why 13 years on, the film still hasn't lost any of its ridiculous, satirical bite.

Watched Kill Bill Vols. 1 and 2, back to back on Friday night/Saturday morning. Took the first train home. Am still suffering from sleep deprivation.

But it was worth it. Every minute. Vol. 1 looked better the second time 'round, somehow. Vol. 2 is very different. Not as zany. More a homage to '60's and '70's Westerns. The Pai Mei scenes were hilarious and closer to Vol. 1. Gordon Liu plays Pai Mei (a distillation of eccentric, grumpy, funny and amazingly-skilled curmudgeonly kungfu masters) to a T. Tarantino's knack for dialogue comes to the fore here and the uncanny fusion of violence and the mundane, a sense of poetic justice and more fine acting from Uma Thurman make Vol. 2 every bit as good as the first.

My Saturday was spent in a sleep-deprived funk.

More film on Sunday afternoon. Ai Nu (lit. "Love Slave" but somehow the film got saddled with the burdensome "Intimate Confessions Of A Chinese Courtesan" for an English title.) was screened as part of the Film Fest, under a series of erotic Shaw films from the 1970s. Very little character development, fight scenes were a nice touch but the main focus was the revenge theme that have been lifted right out of a pulp novel. The sex and S&M was mostly implied which led to some cheesy (by our standards today) transitions and abrupt cuts. What was shown however, was probably shocking for its time. Some female frontal nudity and lesbians kissing and so on.

Reactor No. 4 at Chernobyl blew up on this day 18 years ago, in 1986.

A biker travels through what is left: a photo journey.

Gnocchi Sauton! #61





"I don't want a toaster."

Generally, things (like this quiz) tend to tick you off. You have contemplated doing grievous bodily harm to door-to-door salesmen.

Which Weird Latin Phrase Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Vitamin F was underwhelming. Some intriguing scenarios and few cliches, but almost no drama at all and mostly amateur acting. Even Yakusho Koji can't rescue the episode he's in (Setchan), although his character will become somewhat of a role model for all otaku ^_^

Neurosurgeon, Writer, Activist, Singaporean

Gopal Baratham passed away two years ago today.

Overview

A Retrospective

And while we are on the subject of helplessness in the face of unprecedented masses and masses of people thronging and crowding and getting in our damn way everyday and everywhere in our lives --

Vibrator wasn't bad at all, but not fantastic. Terashima Shinobu gave a convincing performance as a lonely woman confused to the point of terror by human communication, while Ohmori Nao's truck driver was slightly goofy and sweet. The music wasn't very appropriate: mostly Sheryl Crow-wannabes. I think it's a good film, but there's something about it that I can't place but that stops it from being great. Like someone put saccharine in my tea.

Finished You Shall Know Our Velocity yesterday.

We run to escape ourselves, because we don't know what else to do.

I love the way the title trips off the tongue so easily -- "YOU SHALL KNOW OUR VELOCITY!" It should be said in so many different ways.

Kill Bill 2: A Bluffer's Guide

Zatoichi is great. It's not meant to be traditional chambara so don't see it that way. Excellent fight sequences, good characterisation and best of all the film never takes itself too seriously. The sub-plot with the siblings drags for a bit though. You can spot the shoddy CGI too -- all the blood-spatter is CGI! -- a mile away. That's probably the most obvious flaw.

I remember when I found out about chemistry
It was a long, long way from here
I was old enough to want it but younger than I wanted to be
Suddenly my mission was clear

So for awhile I conducted experiments
And I was amazed by the things I learned
From a fine fine girl with nothing but good intentions and a
Bad tendency to get burned

All about chemistry
Won't you show me everything you know
Ah wonder what you do to me
Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh, oh

--- Supersonic, Chemistry

Was busy, so no time to blog about Sunday on Monday. Another half-day of volunteering at the Film Fest on Sunday.

The Corporation: Slick production examining the excesses of corporations. It was fun to show by the WHO's criteria, corporations would be complete psychopaths if they were real people. What I liked most was that the documentary took pains to show that the roots of most of the problems about corporations can be found in the way they have been defined by man-made laws. No crude moralising here, but did get polemic towards the end. Propaganda for my side. If you liked Naomi Klein's No Logo, you will enjoy this.

Watched some of Fallon, Nevada. Dead boring.

Final Solution was banned at the last minute. Award-winning, controversial, banned.

Shame on our censors for taking the easy way out. Clearly the only racial conflict people can think about are the ones sanctioned by MOE. Shame

-------------------------------------------

Before that, I wandered around Clarke Quay. Picked up a brand-new paperback copy of Oryx and Crake for $10, and a 2nd hand copy of the Jackie Brown OST. The CD's a Japanese edition, and there's an insert with all the song lyrics and dialogue snippets transcribed (sweet!) and a commentary on all the tracks, in Japanese. Will sit down one day and figure all that out.

My first ever day of volunteering at the Singapore Int'l Film Festival. A Saturday with scorching sunshine spent mostly indoors at the Singapore History Museum. I need sleep. Will be brief.

KAFA Animations: My favourite was The Letter. Surreal and quietly humourous. The unnamed male narrator sends letters to his ex-girlfriend, pouring his feelings out in the hope that she'll return to him. The local post office is staffed by only one person, and all Ami does is stamp envelopes. Actually, she's been opening the narrator's letters, reading them, and falling in love with him. Then their little unnamed town is suddenly infested with benevolent, mail-eating dinosaurs.

Cosmic Tree was also excellently drawn and animated.

Fear Factor (Star Galaxy): One in a series of documentary shorts that focus on the recent Indonesian elections. Star Galaxy focuses on the activities of a dangdut group that performs for all the major parties. This short was screened as part of the launch of a book about the work of Indonesian New Wave director Garin Nugroho. Nugroho is actively nurturing a new generation of directors through projects like Fear Factor (which he produced), and he talked about his experiences in dealing with film censorship and oppression during the Suharto years.

Parasite Dolls: I took off in the afternoon to catch this with David. Too bad it was a dud. Mediocre plots, quality of animation above average but I expected nothing less. Hope the filmfest people get a better anime offering next year!

Morning Sun: 2 hour documentary about the Cultural Revolution. Nothing that I didn't know from classes, but I loved the extensive media footage used throughout the film. I also liked that the interviews with leaders who were persecuted during that period and with their children, which helps to reinforces the film's thesis of misguided, uncontrolled youthful fanaticism. The sense of religious fervour mixed with rock-star idolatry that fueled the excesses of the Cultural Revolution is crystal-clear in this polished effort.

The New York Times, April 13, 2004

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR

Solitude and the Fortresses of Youth

By MICHAEL CHABON

SAN FRANCISCO � Earlier this month my local paper, The San Francisco Chronicle, reported that a college student had been expelled from art school here for submitting a story "rife with gruesome details about sexual torture, dismemberment and bloodlust" to his creative writing class. The instructor, a poet named Jan Richman, subsequently found herself out of a job. The university chose not to explain its failure to renew Ms. Richman's contract, but she intimated that she was being punished for having set the tone for the class by assigning a well-regarded if disturbing short story by the MacArthur-winning novelist David Foster Wallace, "Girl with Curious Hair." Ms. Richman had been troubled enough by the student's work to report it to her superiors in the first place, in spite of the fact that it was not, according to the Chronicle, "the first serial-killer story she had read in her six semesters on the faculty at the Academy of Art University."

Homicide inspectors were called in; a criminal profiler went to work on the student. The officers found no evidence of wrongdoing. The unnamed student had made no threat; his behavior was not considered suspicious. In the end, no criminal charges were brought.

In this regard, the San Francisco case differs from other incidents in California, and around the country, in which students, unlucky enough to have as literary precursor the Columbine mass-murderer Dylan Klebold, have found themselves expelled, even prosecuted and convicted on criminal charges, because of the violence depicted in their stories and poems. The threat posed by these prosecutions to civil liberties, to the First Amendment rights of our young people, is grave enough. But as a writer, a parent and a former teenager, I see the workings of something more iniquitous: not merely the denial of teenagers' rights in the name of their own protection, but the denial of their humanity in the name of preserving their innocence.

It is in the nature of a teenager to want to destroy. The destructive impulse is universal among children of all ages, rises to a peak of vividness, ingenuity and fascination in adolescence, and thereafter never entirely goes away. Violence and hatred, and the fear of our own inability to control them in ourselves, are a fundamental part of our birthright, along with altruism, creativity, tenderness, pity and love. It therefore requires an immense act of hypocrisy to stigmatize our young adults and teenagers as agents of deviance and disorder. It requires a policy of dishonesty about and blindness to our own histories, as a species, as a nation, and as individuals who were troubled as teenagers, and who will always be troubled, by the same dark impulses. It also requires that favorite tool of the hypocritical, dishonest and fearful: the suppression of constitutional rights.

We justly celebrate the ideals enshrined in the Bill of Rights, but it is also a profoundly disillusioned document, in the best sense of that adjective. It stipulates all the worst impulses of humanity: toward repression, brutality, intolerance and fear. It couples an unbridled faith in the individual human being, redeemed time and again by his or her singular capacity for tenderness, pity and all the rest, with a profound disenchantment about groups of human beings acting as governments, court systems, armies, state religions and bureaucracies, unchecked by the sting of individual conscience and only belatedly if ever capable of anything resembling redemption.

In this light the Bill of Rights can be read as a classic expression of the teenage spirit: a powerful imagination reacting to a history of overwhelming institutional repression, hypocrisy, chicanery and weakness. It is a document written by men who, like teenagers, knew their enemy intimately, and saw in themselves all the potential they possessed to one day become him. We tend to view idealism and cynicism as opposites, when in fact neither possesses any merit or power unless tempered by, fused with, the other. The Bill of Rights is the fruit of that kind of fusion; so is the teenage imagination.

The imagination of teenagers is often � I'm tempted to say always � the only sure capital they possess apart from the love of their parents, which is a force far beyond their capacity to comprehend or control. During my own adolescence, my imagination, the kingdom inside my own skull, was my sole source of refuge, my fortress of solitude, at times my prison. But a fortress requires a constant line of supply; those who take refuge in attics and cellars require the unceasing aid of confederates; prisoners need advocates, escape plans, or simply a window that gives onto the sky.

Like all teenagers, I provisioned my garrison with art: books, movies, music, comic books, television, role-playing games. My secret confederates were the works of Monty Python, H. P. Lovecraft, the cartoonist Vaughan Bod�, and the Ramones, among many others; they kept me watered and fed. They baked files into cakes and, on occasion, for a wondrous moment, made the walls of my prison disappear. Given their nature as human creations, as artifacts and devices of human nature, some of the provisions I consumed were bound to be of a dark, violent, even bloody and horrifying nature; otherwise I would not have cared for them. Tales and displays of violence, blood and horror rang true, answered a need, on some deep, angry level that maybe only those with scant power or capital, regardless of their age, can understand.

It was not long before I began to write: stories, poems, snatches of autobiographical jazz. Often I imitated the work of my confederates: stories of human beings in the most extreme situations and states of emotion � horror stories; accounts of madness and despair. In part � let's say in large part, if that's what it takes to entitle the writings of teenagers to unqualified protection under the First Amendment � this was about expression. I was writing what I felt, what I believed, wished for, raged against, hoped and dreaded. But the main reason I wrote stories � and the reason that I keep on writing them today � was not to express myself. I started to write because once it had been nourished, stoked and liberated by those secret confederates, I could not hold back the force of my imagination. I had been freed, and I felt that it was now up to me to do the same for somebody else, somewhere, trapped in his or her own lonely tower.

We don't want teenagers to write violent poems, horrifying stories, explicit lyrics and rhymes; they're ugly, in precisely the way that we are ugly, and out of protectiveness and hypocrisy, even out of pity and love and tenderness, we try to force young people to be innocent of everything but the effects of that ugliness. And so we censor the art they consume and produce, and prosecute and suspend and expel them, and when, once in a great while, a teenager reaches for an easy gun and shoots somebody or himself, we tell ourselves that if we had only censored his journals and curtailed his music and video games, that awful burst of final ugliness could surely have been prevented. As if art caused the ugliness, when of course all it can ever do is reflect and, perhaps, attempt to explain it.

Let teenagers languish, therefore, in their sense of isolation, without outlet or nourishment, bereft of the only thing that makes it all bearable: knowing that somebody else has felt the way that you feel, has faced it, run from it, rued it, lamented it and transformed it into art; has been there, and returned, and lived, for the only good reason we have: to tell the tale. How confident we shall be, once we have done this, of never encountering the ugliness again! How happy our children will be, and how brave, and how safe!

Michael Chabon is the author of "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay," which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2001.

Added Diesel Sweeties to the sidebar.

I know I will never bear the white-hot intensity of your love for music, Vaya.

In my case, out of the blue I'll start humming or singing a song in my head (or out loud when I'm in the shower -- doesn't everyone?), and then my conscious mind catches up and realises that the same song is playing on the radio or the PA system. Just somewhere in the background.

The corollary of this is that I get irritated whenever a riff or a sequence will set off a song, but then my conscious mind runs up and tells me that no, it's really another one. One of those hip-hop songs that oh-so-cleverly grafts new words onto an older song, or another lacklustre cover out to milk adolescents for money.

What I like most about Gus van Sant's Elephant were the use of tracking shots throughout and the multiple character plots converging and diverging. In addition, it was pretty smart to depict the killers entering the school early in the movie. Suddenly the rest of the movie's banality is tinged uneasily with foreboding.

Just don't expect the film to have any answers. Gus van Sant's point is that there aren't any, and he does this by presenting all the characters except for the killers, in all their banality to the point of near-stereotyping. As for the killers, van Sant does play around with audience preconceptions, letting some apply but not all.

His point? Things happen for no reason whatsoever. Metaphysically depressing, technically excellent.

Better Living Through Online Personality Quizzes #27


You are Professor X!

You are a very effective teacher, and you are very
committed to those who learn from you. You put
your all into everything you do, to some extent
because you fear failure more than anything
else. You are always seeking self-improvement,
even in areas where there is nothing you can do
to improve.


Which X-Men character are you most like?
brought to you by Quizilla

I used to keep detailed records of all my daily expenditures back in JC. Perhaps it's time I started again.

Picked up Dave Egger's You Shall Know Our Velocity at the local library. It feels good to fill my hours with fiction again.

Better Living Through Online Personality Quizzes #281

I am Kung Fu Master. I like to be in control of myself. I dislike crowds, especially crowds containing people trying to kill me. Even though I always win, I prefer to avoid fights if possible. What Video Game Character Are You?

The Pink Panther is 40 years old this year. As part of the celebrations, Virgin has just released a compilation including remixes of Mancini's classic Pink Panther theme and chock full of lounge and bossa nova grooves from the likes of Fantastic Plastic Machine, Pizzicato Five, Fatboy Slim, Dimitri from Paris and Les Hommes. Take a listen: The Pink Panther's Penthouse Party.

Happy Belated Easter!

Went shopping for clothes yesterday, with Amanda and David tagging along (Thanks both of you, although I think the laughter you had at my expense was worth the time you spent :p).

The haul:

1) Shine OST. From a store that sells/rents CDs new and used. The OST was supposedly new but I suspect it's been used. Nice price anyway, and I like the movie a lot.

2) A t-shirt with the Kenninji Fujin and Raijin on it. Bargain!

3) Khaki cargo pants that were on sale. Was given a hideous F4 shopping bag to put it in. Fortunately I managed to trash that bag later after buying

4) A Graniph t-shirt.

I learnt two things:

1) My taste in clothes is more boring than I thought it was and

2) Retail therapy really does not work for me.

I prevaricate over every purchase and if sufficiently large, I will agonise over it for days afterwards. I don't know how I managed to build up this guilt complex over shopping, but it's there. And with all the horror stories about my peers asphyxiating under credit card debts, unpaid loans and low bank balances in a depressed economy, that may not necessarily be such a bad thing after all.

This is what Episode II should've been like.

Attack of the Clones: The Abriged Script

Anyone remember The Rocketeer? The movie wasn't bad at all, but for some reason audiences couldn't be bothered with the Golden Age, 1930s-40s setting. Disney let it die out.

This mini-bout of nostalgia was triggered by the little Kubrick figure of The Rocketeer I bought last night. Good detailing on the rocketpack, the jacket and especially the helmet which unfortunately is not removable.

Medicom also made a limited edition 12" Rocketeer figure. Quite interesting how the Japanese pick up on cool things that Americans neglect, and then some. ^_^

The last time I had a mini bout of The Rocketeer nostalgia was back in Chicago. I was browsing at Powell's and flipped through the graphic novel. Up till then, I didn't know the movie was based on the work of Dave Stevens. I didn't buy the book, but after I got home I wished I had. When I went back the next day it was gone.

Watched Hellboy last night with my bro. He'd called me at the last minute and I wanted to sleep more than 5 hours a night for a change. But I really wanted to see the movie and I'm glad I did. In any case I managed to make it to work on time.

Hellboy was great fun, even if the movie loses a bit of cohesion towards the end. Smart, snappy dialogue. Didn't dissolve into self-angst or over-sentimentality. Loved Ron Perlman's wry humour and one-liners, and Selma Blair is hot (brunette, long hair, bangs? /sigh). Lovecraftian monsters and generous Cthulu references. Interesting, if unimaginative villains.

I only wish I'd read the comics earlier :/ Damn my well-spent youth.

The Chemical Brothers have a new single out: Get Yourself High. The music video is awesomely funny:

"... the video is composed entirely of footage gleaned from the 1978 Chinese martial arts film Shaolin yu Wu Dang (�Two Champions of Death�) except that the material has been altered so that, in addition to swords and knives, the characters wield vinyl records, microphones and headphones as weapons and appear to be singing the lyrics of the song..."

You must watch it. Watch it now.

Watched The Passion of the Christ last night. I entered the cinema with hangups because I don't agree with Mel Gibson's very traditionalist view of Catholicism and I detest the methods by which the film was promoted here. Then after a while I realised that most of my fellow patrons might not be Christian and so to them this would be just another film. Reality check: The film is not the Gospel, and Jim Caviezel is no Jesus. No point getting angsty. I relaxed :)

The film is best seen as an adaptation of the Passion found in the real Gospels, and a bit of a loose one at that. A lot of it is fairly modern reasoning along the lines of: "Yeah, Jesus really loved his mum so he must have done this, she must have done that, Pontius must have did this etc etc." This explains in part the heavy emphasis on the mother-son relationship between Mary and Jesus, and the insertion of elements like Pontius's wife Claudia (shades of Julius Caesar here), the Devil skulking around, and the philosophical whitewashing of Pontius Pilate. I suppose these had to be in there to keep the movie interesting for modern moviegoers. Spiritual texts don't really translate well into crowd-pleasing blockbusters.

The film wasn't that anti-Semitic imho -- some effort was made to insert dissenting Jewish characters and give them some screen time, but Caiphas resembled a sneering WWF wrestler more than a High Priest. Good two-dimensionality there.

The digitally-altered hazel eyes were uncanny. Weirded me out. Having one of Jesus's eyes swollen shut early on was quite clever 'cos it forced the audience to focus on that one eye for the rest of the movie. And yes, it also paves the way for lots of looking scenes.

Add to the mix melodramatic acting (Judas gets lots of time to agonise over his betrayal), flashbacks with modern touches (an adult Jesus being playful with Mother Mary?), slow-mo overkill (pun intended!), a ponderous music score that has an erhu pop up when the Devil's onscreen and also morphs into a military march at the end, and did I mention the gratuitous slow-motion?

What I really want to know is: what does the Lord think of the movie?

Better Living Through Online Personality Quizzes #001

w00t! :D


:: how jedi are you? ::

Billie Holliday's birthday today.

...... Money, you�ve got lots of friends
Crowding round the door
When it's gone, spending ends
They don�t come no more......

Why did I post that article? On the one hand it's sobering to know that no matter how horrible I feel, someone younger than I am is going through a finer meat-grinder. On the other hand, reading that article left me feeling helpless.

Sunday's edition of the Straits Times carried a feature on depressed teens. The writing is slightly alarmist but well-intentioned. I wish I could link it, but chances are by the time you come across this (if you ever do) the link will be broken.

Here it is anyway: Gen D: Depressed , deviant , disconnected

Probably the most important part of the article:

"... Most disconcertingly, the behavioural problems which used to beset a minority of 'youths on the fringe' or 'youths at risk' have today invaded the 'so-called moral majority' too.

Psychiatrists say a growing number of youths today suffer from one of the three Ds - depression, deviant behaviour or disconnectedness.

According to Dr Yeo, no longer are three-D sufferers predominantly from poorer or broken families without a father figure. In fact, many come from intact families with concerned, well-to-do parents.

Psychologist Felix Lim, who specialises in teen issues, says that a good number are 'rich but deprived children', the upgraded version of yesterday's latch-key kids. They return home daily to an empty bungalow, dog, chauffeur, maid and other paid employees of their parents, who are too busy earning big bucks outside.

He notes that many dual-income parents practise the 'token economy' at home: They try to buy their way into their children's good books, or incentivise good behaviour by giving them a 'cash bonus', the latest gadget or track shoes if they meet pre-set Key Performance Indicators.

'Just because it works for them at work, they think it will work at home. But the problem is a lack of consistent parenting. You need plenty of contact time to cultivate attitudes, values, beliefs in children. There is just no shortcut,' he says.

What is clear is that money, love and good intentions no longer buy immunity against a troubled adolescence. Even those who ace their studies or are school leaders are not exempt.

Mr Lim notes that achievement-focused top students become a target group for anorexia or bulimia, because they tend to displace their need for significance onto leadership roles, sports trophies or good grades.

The better they do, the poorer they tend to be at handling the 'loss of face' of failure when it happens. 'After all, this is a place where a person's worth is measured by his grades, the house he lives in or the cellphone he uses. Upkeeping standards is a very real pressure,' says Ms Chew.

And teen society today is an unforgivingly class-conscious one, as the recent hoo-ha over a Raffles Girls' School girl dating a neighbourhood school boy shows.

It does not help that many Singaporean parents are so protective that their children acquire a 'learnt helplessness' and fail to develop their own coping resources or a healthy adversity quotient, says Mr Lim.

That is one of the reasons why teen suicide rates are spiralling today, especially among young females aged 15 to 24 here.

According to psychiatrist and suicidologist Chia Boon Hock, youths take their own lives because of a combination of relationship problems and family, financial, social and school stresses.

Depression is also becoming as commonplace a malady as the common cold, notes Ms Chew. Having done profiling exercises on hundreds of secondary school students, she says a disturbing picture of Singapore's youth has emerged.

'Many are highly emotional, extroverted, open to trying anything new, hence very vulnerable. Despite being very high in anger, they have low focus, low motivation and a low sense of achievement. This combination is very scary, because if anything snaps, they cut or kill themselves,' she notes with a shudder.

According to Mr Lim, this outward expression of aggression, angst and apathy is symptomatic of an adolescent's emotionally fraught and highly distracted world. He has patients who come to his clinic declaring 'I hate my parents' or 'My mother is a bitch'.

But such defiant bravado, says Dr Yeo, is just a 'brittle front'. 'Deep down, they still desire parental approval but feel that they cannot be seen to need it. And family size being so small these days, they have no siblings to turn to,' he says.

So many 'cope' by hurting themselves through self-mutilation, starving, multiple suicide attempts and numbing themselves with drugs and alcohol.

Others, who crave emotional fulfilment in this mechanical age, desperately seek connections in sexual escapades or gangs.

Even among the 'good kids', school counsellors note a growing disconnectedness and disenchantment.

'For many of them, all that innate fire and spirit has been snuffed out in power struggles with overbearing adults. They end up disillusioned,' says Mr Lim.

These days, he and other psychologists are seeing more cases of dysthymia, a chronic low-mood disorder that persists for two years or more. Despite not having suffered any major depressive episodes, these youths appear listless, down and out, have low self-esteem and difficulty making decisions, and function below the base line.

Right into their 30s, they find it hard to hold on to jobs or relationships.

Mr Lim is candid that such stunted self-image and distorted self-identity problems take years of medication and therapy to fix. It is not easy to go back in time to get them re-attuned to society and in tune with themselves.

So he does not buy the cavalier theories that the three Ds are 'just a phase' which most teenagers will 'eventually grow out' of.

With more permanent scars and the high stakes of today's adolescent minefield, his question is: 'Will they grow out of all these well-adjusted, or mal-adaptive?'"

Better Living Through Online Personality Quizzes #493




Take the What Should Your New Year's Resolution Be? Quiz

Better Living Through Online Personality Quizzes #149

It's a little pathetic, how I need a cup o' black liquid before I can be productive in the real world. Before that, my mind is in a near-catatonic state.

Was out late with Amanda and her friends last night. Dinner first at Billy Bomber's and then we all adjourned to Max Brenner's for chocolate chocolate chocolate.

I wonder if the staff there will let us in again. /chuckle

Amanda! Hope you had a good birthday!

Hey! HMV loves Kill Bill. And admit it -- you do too.

Why do the Japanese get all the cool merchandise? Check out that t-shirt!

And why are the Japanese plugging Kill Bill Vol. 2 as a "love story"?

Happened across a Sembawang Music clearing stock sale on Friday evening while looking for wrapping paper. I hadn't seen a laserdisc for while before then. Wow -- does anyone still have LD players?

Picked up an old 2 CD compilation of music from films for cheap. It's by the BBC, so it has some class versus your generic, vanilla compilation. Specifically, it's music from films featured in Film 2000 with Jonathan Ross.

The annoying bit is: I can't play the damn CDs on my PC. Both CDs are supposed to come with their own CD player -- some form of rudimentary copy control measure I think -- but for some reason the software's not on either disc. All you get is an error message when you click on the button labelled: "Launch CD Player".

Ah well. It cost 5 dollars anyway.